


rekindle

by pseudocitrus



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Emotional Turmoil, Fluff, M/M, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-12-28 17:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21140471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: All the Promare are gone, now.And yet.Sometimes.When it is quiet, when he is focused on nothing, when the supposed disappearance of the interdimensional being candled at his ear makes him lax enough to not draw a close rein on himself —He hears...something.Something that sounds a lot like —Burn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i saw promare 3 times in theaters, i adore it so much ////////
> 
> i haven't found a good way to catch up to a lot of promare canon...so i tried my best, but some details might be off.;;;
> 
> i hope you're having a good day!

All the Promare are gone, now.

And yet.

Sometimes.

When it is quiet, when he is focused on nothing, when the supposed disappearance of the interdimensional being candled at his ear makes him lax enough to not draw a close rein on himself —

He hears..._something_.

Something that sounds a lot like —

_Burn._

_It’s nothing_, Lio tells himself, firmly, whenever it happens, or whenever he suspects that it will happen — in the empty cold air of his apartment scavenged from the skyscraper wrecks of the Prances Project, or on the cold leveled plazas of Promepolis, or even in the gust of cold air that follows Galo’s striding through the Reconstruction Team break room.

It’s cold everywhere, really, all the time, so maybe that’s the only reason why he hears it, because his body, now mere flesh and blood bereft of alien temperatures, is freezing. _It will be warmer when everything is back_, he tells himself, _it will stop then_ — when there are things to block the wind, when there are facilities to heat the air. Humanity has thirty years of experience rebuilding, and all the fire-impervious equipment and construction material rebuilding specifically required; it doesn’t take _that_ long, really, for buildings to start sprouting up again through the soot, for which Lio is relieved, and then frustrated.

It is still...so...cold.

_More. Hotter._

The weeks that have transpired since the Second World Blaze haven’t yet smudged out Lio’s years of being a glorified conduit. And this feels too much like those early days — those first ones — the ones he didn’t dare speak of to anyone, not even Gueira and Meis, the time when Lio had realized the voice inside him was stronger than in anyone else. It deafened him; and empowered him, uniquely, with that two-toned fire he could summon not just in extreme fear or agony, but in sorrow, or surprise, or pride, or happiness, or mild annoyance. It took him a long time to rein himself in, to learn how to dampen and suppress and refuse the fire in him any spark of emotion it could use to run amok and (he coughs) burn down an entire city. There shouldn’t be any risk now, but —

— but if so —

Then why does he still hear it?

Compulsively, he holds his breath, again, just to check.

_More_, he hears. A wisp. A whine. _Hotter, hotter_.

_Shut up_, he tells them. _Go away._

But they continue their whisper, quietly.

In the past, there was only one thing he could do to soothe those voices.

“Oi!” A boisterous voice, as Lio opens his locker and can’t quite yet bring himself to unravel the Reconstruction Team coat from around his body and put it away. His hands fist in his pockets as the voice continues. “Good work today, Lio Fotia!”

“Good work, Galo Thymos,” he mutters back. He coughs as Galo claps him on the back and then continues on, announcing his farewells. Lio glances, slightly, to watch him go. As usual Galo is wearing what looks to be the bare minimum, as if completely undisturbed that it is freezing outside. And inside. And everywhere.

The murmur comes again, as Galo waves and laughs, as Lio watches the muscles on Galo’s back. The work of clearing and building has only made Galo stronger. But for Lio...

Galo spent a lot of time getting Lio to where he is today.

_To where everyone is today, _Lio corrects himself. Afterward, in the ashes of literally everything, Galo became a beacon of light. He emitted the kind of brightness that was instinctive for everyone to lean toward and follow, not just the ex-Burnish.

”_Leave it to me,_” he said, when Lio’s first priority was to free every one of his people from the engine, and, to Lio’s disbelief, he scaled the carcass of the spaceship alongside him, hammering and shouting away. True to his word, he provided every single Burnish (_No, ex-Burnish_) with work, pitching them alongside other humans with a blunt matter-of-factness everyone was too astonished by to protest. Galo could effortlessly bridge decades of smoldering with the sheer force of his loudness and stupidity and, in the same inexplicably long breath, announce that one of the first places rebuilt would be a pizza parlor. The first time he took Lio there, to a place where the oven lay not too far away yawning wide and baring its burning tongues, Lio took a bite as Galo leaned forward and stared at him to gauge his reaction. It took everything in Lio to tamp down the swell in his chest.

_All, everything — burn!_

“It’s good,” Lio said, and Galo beamed, and noticed nothing.

Presently, Lio zips the coat up, to his neck. It was easier when it was supposedly genetic. It was easier when there were wastes he could wander alone, unable to hurt or disappoint anyone. Galo has done a lot for him. Too much, for Lio to want to admit that the person the Promare forged him into might be too broken to fit into the new world Galo is trying so hard to make.

:::

Still. He tries.

“Don’t take on so much by yourself” is Galo’s constant scold; but in those first few weeks it feels impossible for Lio to accomplish anything on his own anyway. Despite the chanting about _teams _and _cooperation_, in those first few weeks without his flame it feels less like equal cooperation and more like Galo helping Lio walk on his own two legs. He gave Lio the newly branded Reconstruction Team coat (“You’ll grow into it!”), and handed it out too to anyone who asked, and took seriously and patiently the duty of training all new team members, until their ears ring and they are too sore to do anything but groan in agony, much less stand.

“What is he making you _do_?”Meis mutters, when he and Gueira come to visit and find Lio splayed out on the floor. Lio only closes his eyes in response, and can’t even protest when Gueira pinches his bicep and hoots.

“Look at this! A muscle!”

Though there’s still some need for Rescue, there’s a greater need for Reconstruction, and Galo takes it seriously. He makes all those that put down their name for it work until they are strong, and surprisingly coordinated. Even the youngest of the Burnish who asked to join had come far from their start locked in a freezer and wrapped in bandages; every day they need less help and guidance, though Lio can’t help keeping an eye on them, and every other ex-Burnish in the vicinity. They never ask it of him, but there are plenty of ways to lighten everyone’s load. One day, Lio returns to locker room and turns on the light only to discover Galo there, sleeping, on a chair. After Galo is shocked awake by Lio’s yell, and crashes to the ground, and picks himself up again, Galo slams his hands down on Lio’s shoulders.

“Look how late it is! I must have slept for hours! And you’re only done working _now_?”

“There’s a lot to do,” Lio says, because it is true, just not as true as _When I’m exhausted I sleep quickly, and don’t lie in bed thinking about burning things, or how cold I am._

“It’s too much on your own! Lio!” He throws an arm over Lio’s shoulder. His voice is bigger than the locker room. “We have to work together. Remember when we fought that first time, and I captured you? The reason why was because of teamwork!”

“The reason why,” Lio mutters, “is because I meant to get captured that time.”

That Galo would consider him _that_ incompetent stings, somewhat. But, it is true that he is often caught unawares. Out in the field Galo pulls Lio back by the collar when Lio dashes unthinkingly into the flames, forgetting they can hurt him. One time he lunges and catches Lio effortlessly around the middle when Lio hops off the top of a brand-new second story, forgetting he has no more means of propulsion. At that time Lio realizes that his face can still burn, furiously.

It is all new. They are reconstructing, not just the city but also as the new society of humans, trying to understand how to work together, trying to understand how to live. They manage it slowly, through gallons of poured concrete, shear walls, girders that take ages to maneuver with the clunky post-Burn prototype units until finally Lio grits his teeth.

_We have to work together, huh_? He can’t stand those crap suits anymore. They only partly match the efficacy of the machines of the past, which even at that time paled in comparison to Burnish fabrications, all the buildings in District C are going to take decades to make, at this rate, and Lucia’s door is open, so he just goes in and tells her so, and then explains his proposal. Lucia squints at him as he explains, her lips pinched in thought.

“That’s way too weird,” she decides, once he’s finished, and once she says it Vinny nods vehemently, in agreement. “How could that possibly work? That kind of configuration —”

“Just try it!” Galo says. Lio jumps. How long was he standing there? If Lucia is surprised by Galo’s appearance, she doesn’t show it. She leans in her chair, so far that she regards him with her head tipped upside-down.

“So you volunteer to test it? This mad thing? This Mad Burnish thing?” she asks, swiveling back and forth. “The way he’s saying the propulsion should work —”

“Lio knows what he’s doing!”

Why isn’t he capable of speaking in a normal volume? Galo’s hand crashes down on Lio’s shoulder and Lio coughs.

_Hotter —_

“You didn’t see him when we fought the first time, he made a huge motorcycle and swords and arrows and things left and right like, woosh! Bam! _Wooosh!_” Galo removes his hand to gesticulate wildly, and any pride Lio might have felt at his compliment wanes somewhat at the idea he might have even mildly resembled Galo’s current demonstrative spasming. Lio frowns.

“I don’t think it was exactly like that.”

“You’re right,” Galo says. “It was more like this — right?” He pinches his face in, puffs up his cheeks, and claps his hands repeatedly.

“Wh — it wasn’t like that either!”

“I got video of all that stuff,” Lucia admits, “but it all burnt up. All the data that’s missing set us back at least, like, 5.23 years. Maybe 5.83. I would need more than just this guy’s random idea.”

“It’s not random,” Lio says, furrowing his brows. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“Aren't you a mad scientist yourself?” Galo asked. “You should appreciate his help!”

“I don't get his motive,” Lucia tells Galo simply. “What does a Burnish boss want if there's no Burnish and no one to boss around?”

Her voice is casual and unconcerned, as if she were simply describing her favorite type of pizza. She looks over, checking Lio's reaction with distant curiosity. The lollipop she's rattling around the back of her mouth makes it hard for him to take such a statement as an insult, though it isn't really like it comes even close to the worst words he's weathered.

Honestly, he would feel the same, probably. He thinks. “I can show you a diagram, if that would be useful.”

Lucia eyes him. She stops swiveling and sits up, so quickly that Vinny squeaks and has to scramble for purchase.

“Alright,” she says, twisting the console toward him. “Go.”

It takes a while to figure out the program and the buttons and the joystick with Lucia and Vinny and Galo staring at him, but he manages it. By the time he drags most of the skeleton in place, the three of them are leaning so far forward they’re getting in his way. Lucia makes a noise of disapproval.

“But that —”

“Not done,” Lio says. Another shape snaps into place, and Lucia says, “_Ah_! So then —”

She has another console, suddenly; she appends more components, following Lio’s pattern, and he says, “Right.”

“The only thing is,” Lucia says, “the engine is too close and the heat output too high. No human could survive riding this.”

Lio reddens. Oh, right.

“But,” Lucia says, snatching his console back from him, “if we just —”

Her fingers flutter; a clatter fills the room, a sharp flurry like hail. Screens flare; text and shapes swarm around the diagram, so wildly that Lio blinks and for a moment can't make sense of any of it, until finally he sees where she's going and starts.

“Right,” he says, with muted excitement. “And then if you add —”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to it, I'm getting to it —”

Shapes drop and fill, wildly. Batteries and pumping engines gather around the prototype's fuel-filled capillaries, followed soon by fatty layers of coolant-loaded padding, layers and layers of insulation, all respirated by vents and vents and more vents.

“Good, and then right there —”

“Yup. And next —”

“There!”

“No, not — it should be a little more —” Lio takes one of the consoles back. It's not the same as manipulating fire, syncing with a precise thought, summoning axles and shocks and obsidian chassis from hot thin air. But even with the fire gone, his mind still remembers exactly how everything needs to be put together, every detail he had to offer to the Promare for them to understand and purr back his arrows, his bow, his sword. The joystick whirls. He adjusts the image on the screen, and then he and Lucia's cursors flicker, without words this time, syncing in their own way, through electricity and zipping pixels. He hardly even notices his breathing, his shifting in his heat, his absentminded pushing of his hair out of his face.

Then, abruptly, they stop: it’s finished. They regard the results of their frenetic design. They are very still. The only sound in the room is the hum of her devices, and Galo's thoughtful “Hmmmm.”

“I don't like it,” he decides, with pursed lips, to which Lio and Lucia say, in unison, “Wait.”

It's a short matter to put together the only things Galo cares about: smooth surfaces, curves and angles suggestive of strength, and grace, and agility, and general cool-ness. Lio plows further into a menu and Lucia snorts as he produces and flattens and elongates polygons into long streamers, and then concatenates them to a shape similar to an umbrella.

“He doesn't need that for construction work,” Lucia says. But her voice is amused, and she tips her head back to look at Galo, whose eyes have caught the light.

“Yes! Yes! Make it!” he shouts, and Lucia says, “Rogerrrr,” and slams the button. The room begins to shake as whatever post-Blaze machinery she put together begins the work of fabrication and assembly.

Galo is so excited he is dancing around like someone ran a current through him. He vibrates around the room; and his eyes are still shining, with a certain kind of spark that reminds Lio of the first time Lio asked for a flame to come into his hand, and received it.

The moment he thinks it, the feeling comes back — with a choke — a hollow that blooms in Lio’s chest, raw, and wide, and fanged with hunger. It ventures a claw in his throat, and Lio gulps, hard, and puts a hand on his chest, as if that might soothe it — as if such a simple thing had ever been able to soothe the fires in him before.

_Hotter!_

Lucia is looking at him, with her dissecting gaze. He can tell this, even though he doesn't dare look back at her, in case she spots the embers he has been too afraid to search for himself in the mirror. This feeling has only ever meant one thing: _burn something, anything, burn it!_

_Stop, _Lio tells himself. He imagines coolness, snow, ice. He pulls the coat more closely around himself. Galo is still going on.

“Finally,” he crows, “a real machine! A one-of-a-kind invention made through a brave and inspired collaboration between a mad scientist and an ex-Mad Burnish boss! It's the...” He gulps in a breath. “...Mad Destruction Fighter!”

“Whaaat? It's a reconstruction tool, dummy. Why is ‘Destruction’ in the name?”

“It's a Destruction _Fighter_! It _fights_ Destruction!”

“Hmph,” Lucia says, but she doesn't seem put off. “Don't mess this one up so quickly, alright? You don't want to ruin Lio's handmade design, right? Plus, since this is a new line I need all the data I can get to iterate.“

“Leave it to me! I'll get you more data than you can store!”

His focus has moved away, and so has Lio’s, into visions of Galo leaping into the suit’s cavity, turning the ignition, and going up in vibrant flames. The feeling that grips him then is one of horror, he wants to think. Everyone comes out to watch the prototype assembly and maiden launch, including the members of Galo’s Burning Rescue team, and Lio hangs behind as they chat and speculate. Lio holds his breath and barely releases it even after the Mad Destruction Fighter works, perfectly.

The girders go up, the concrete gets poured. The week’s planned work for the District C buildings is done. In the sunset-colored distance Galo is leaning out the prototype and posing, and people are goaded to cheer and clap, both for Galo himself as well as for Lio, who grimaces and scratches his head awkwardly as he receives his congratulations.

“Make a flying one next, Lio!” Aina says cheerfully.

“No, a larger one,” Varys says. “We’ll need huge Destruction Fighters in order to get buildings up to where they were before.”

“It’s great,” Remi says simply, to which Ignis adds, “Good work.”

He never liked visiting non-Burnish cities, before; it was uncomfortable for him to be looked at, recognized, vulnerable, and he feels the same way now, though it’s not like they’ll arrest him. Lucia is the only one without immediate praise, and Lio drifts back to where she is propped atop the retrofitted Reconstructionmobile, glancing back and forth between the prototype and its multitudinous output feeds across three different screens, the margins of which she is scratching incomprehensible notes. Once Galo finally dismounts, she sets it aside and stretches, with a big yawn.

“So it works after all,” she says. “I like it a lot, actually. Something like that wouldn’t even occur to the average human. I wonder where we’d be now if things had been different between humans and Burnish from the beginning. Uh, between Burnish and non-Burnish, I mean.”

She looks over at him. Her fingertips temple and flitter, mischievously. “Feel free to let me know if you have any other ideas. You can graduate from Mad Burnish to mad scientist, like me.”

“Alright,” Lio says. And then, because he is curious: “So you’re open to my help now, even though I don’t have a motive?”

“Oh,” Lucia says. “No. I understand your motive now.”

“Lio!” It’s Galo. Lio jumps as Galo makes his way toward him, striding through the recently-cleared debris. He’s streaked with soot and dirt from little flaws in the Mad Destruction Fighter’s prototype structure, but looks otherwise as bright and shining as usual.

“I almost forgot again.” After a minute or two of checking every pocket on his pants, Galo finally finds what he was looking for. He holds it up in front of Lio’s face, pinched between two fingers, triumphantly. Lio frowns.

“A hair tie?”

“For you! Your hair is getting long.”

Is it? Lio blinks. His hair hasn’t changed in...forever.

_Hair...grows?_ The idea that it does, as well as the idea that he has forgotten so, shocks him. For the majority of his life, his body has only been a vessel; when it cracked or split, Promare restored it back to exactly the way it was when all his cells were replaced by embers and tongues of fire. During his training, his accidental cuts and bruises seeped dark, liquidy, red to remind him of his return to flesh, but — a simple thing like hair growth — that happens so slowly he barely notices it —

When Lio doesn’t take the hair tie, Galo bites off his gloves, and spins Lio around, and fists up a handful of Lio’s hair with surprising delicacy. Lio is always assuming Galo’s oafishness means that he is clumsy and careless and not like he actually is, attentive, combing through Lio’s hair and taking care to gather every strand together before banding it off.

Without his hair covering it, Lio’s nape feels uncomfortably exposed. Galo spins him around and examines him, eyes narrow, lips bunching.

“Good,” Galo decides finally, and gives him a thumbs-up, and strides off again. Lio watches, rubbing his neck, which now is the only part of him that feels warm. And then, uncomfortably warm. And then —

_Hotter…HOTTER!_

He makes a fist. Not too long ago, cries this loud would have flame oozing helplessly from between the creases of his fingers. There should be no fire in him anymore and yet his heart is racing as fast as if he hasn’t burnt a thing in months. He looks up at the new frame of the building before him, the Mad Destruction Fighter’s work, and for a moment he is lost in a daydream, a vivid image of it erupting in a mass of light. Sharp-edged glittering embers, like confetti. The pressure in his chest relieved all at one and bellowed into the sky as smoke. Wouldn’t that feel nice?

_No. It wouldn’t. Stop_! _Stop_.

Lucia is looking, again.

“Looks good,” she says.

“Thanks,” Lio mutters, and flees.

In the past, there was only one thing he could do to soothe those voices. Back in his apartment, he can’t help it any longer. He unzips his coat, just enough to reach into on of its inner pockets and pull out a little box he had found himself reaching for when surveying emergency kits in the break room: matches. He takes a breath, and when he releases it, he strikes it alight.

The fire is tiny. Reddish, yellow, and untame — it eats down and down as he watches, it nips his fingertips, and he tosses the blackened matchstick into a glass, and strikes another alight. It takes five before he feels himself reined in, composed, cold again. He topples backward, onto the floor, and zips up the coat.

Teamwork can’t help this. It is getting worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you’re having a good day!

Then again, maybe he’s just not looking in the right place.

What would non-Burnish know about the problem he has?

Even so, it takes him a while to compose the message. He waits until a day comes that he is so sore he can’t imagine putting himself through even more work, and churns back and forth on the wording, and finally manages a simple: _Let’s go to lunch._

The response comes immediately.

_Sure, Boss!_

:::

He still remembers clearly the day that the world changed for him, the day he was engulfed in flames. What he doesn’t much remember, he realizes uneasily, is what everything was like before all that. He waits for something about this new, colder world to become familiar to him, or waits at least for himself to become familiar to it. There did once used to be a Lio that didn’t have that voice, resonating, thirsty, _Burn —_

“Of course you don’t really remember it was like before, Boss,” Gueira says, even though Lio isn’t meaningfully a boss of anything anymore. “You were so young.”

_Not that young_, Lio grumbles, to himself. Even he has lived long enough to know it’s only young people that like to protest that.

“You were also the strongest of all of us, so it makes sense the world the way it is now is particularly weird,” Meis adds, reaching for another slice of pizza.

“It’s not anything I can’t handle,” Lio says, even as Gueira says, “Oh! Good point, good point.”

They pause, to chew.

“This place is so good,” Gueira gushes through a mouthful of melted cheese. “Galo took you here, right? This is the place he wanted back?”

“Yeah. You don’t remember?”

“That guy has good taste.” Gueira licks his lips. “I approve.”

“Of the pizza?” Lio asks. “We’ve had it before.”

“You just like everything now that it doesn’t turn into monja the moment it hits your gullet,” Meis tells Gueira.

“And? So?”

To Lio, Meis says, “Speaking of Galo, did he do this too?” He prods Lio’s ponytail, and Lio touches it again himself, self-consciously.

“Why do you think he did it?” he mutters.

“Because you haven’t changed your style the whole time we’ve known you. And it looks so…casual,” Gueira says. “Like you just got out of bed. I never thought you’d get tired of ironing your ruffles every morning.”

“Probably harder to do now that you need to use a machine for it,” Meis says.

“…it is,” Lio admits, and they both laugh, loudly.

That Lio was the strongest of all of them didn’t mean that Gueira and Meis didn’t take their liberties sometimes, teasing him. That they had casual moments around him even after accepting him as their “Boss” was something pleasant Lio hadn’t expected when he had first found them, when he had decided firmly, queasily, that he would finally take the chance. He’d wanted it so bad, back then: _A city for us, for the Burnish, where we can live without fear._ But first he needed comrades that could match him, if the worst happened — if the voices inside him screamed for so much combustion that Lio would want for nothing more than to completely, fully explode.

He didn’t have the luxury of giving in. And it was a gift that they understood it, even without any discussion: their light meant they had a duty to everyone else.

Lio waits patiently until they finish their bites before he continues.

“How is everyone doing?” Lio asks. “The Burnish that you know. The Ex-Burnish, I mean.”

Gueira and Mais exchange a glance.

“Fine, of course,” Meis says. “As well as can be expected.” He pauses, and then says, “But how are you, Lio? Still training?”

“...yes. Though it’s mostly in relation to construction and so on. Trying to figure out how those clunky suits work.” He can’t remember the last time Meis actually called him by his name. It’s strange. Lio sits back, trying to understand what’s happening. At loss, he just continues. “Mills is fine too, if you remember him. The boy with the bandages on his face, that we rescued way back when...Galo let him join and gave him an eyepatch and everything.”

“Speaking of Galo,” Meis says. “He said that you’ve been working too much.”

Galo said that? Since when did he talk to them? Gueira and Meis had declined joining the Reconstruction team; he didn’t know they and Galo really knew each other, much less made time to speak when Lio wasn’t there.

“I only do what needs to be done,” Lio replies evenly. “And there’s a lot to do, all the time. Especially since Galo is letting even the younger people aid in Reconstruction. I thought someone like Mills might not be able to stand it, but Galo said anyone who wants to contribute should be given a way to do so. It’s not like a child like that can get into much trouble anymore without Promare, so I suppose it’s fine. Galo even gave him a new eyepatch with a logo on it, which looks…well, Mills likes it. Then there’s Ignata, his friend, that older girl, who —”

“Lio,” Meis interrupts. “What about you?”

They are looking at him. Lio stares back. He takes a breath —

_More, more, more —_

— and slowly lets it out again.

“What about me?” Lio says. “I’m fine.”

It comes out automatically. Now that he is here, in front of him, he can’t bring himself to do it. Gueira and Mais have done a lot for him. Too much, for Lio to want to admit that in this new world he isn’t the strong person they might remember him as.

“Boss,” Gueira says, and then winces when Meis looks at him sharply. He starts again. “…Lio. Um, how do I put this.” He scratches his head, grimaces. “Stop...being a dumbass? Ow!”

Meis elbowed him, fiercely. “What Gueira means,” he says, frowning, “is that we can tell something is wrong. You wouldn’t call us out here just to eat pizza. I mean, you can, and maybe you actually will one day, but it’s obvious that something is off. So, what is it? You can tell us.”

Lio stares at them. He can feel it then, just the slightest twinge, something he hasn’t felt in so long that for just a moment, he doesn’t recognize it.

_Fear_ — a dark grease in the back of his throat, ripe for flame. He swallows, hard, and then again, when it keeps clawing upward.

If there’s still something in him that wants so badly to burn — and if he ever lets it go, in this world where Gueira and Meis no longer have the ability to hold him back —

_Stop stop stop stop stop_, Lio begs himself. Dampen. Suppress. Snuff. Emotions are the last thing that can help him right now. But they continue, one after another, an inconsolable churn of fear and panic and frustration in his stomach, like oil.

This is not working. He hoped that just seeing them would calm him, but now he just feels worse, and — even more. He feels even more. He has to get out. He stands.

They stand, too.

“Boss,” Meis says quickly. “The Promare are gone. You don’t — you don’t have to do this anymore, you know?”

“Do what?” Lio asks.

“Watch over all us ex-Burnish,” Gueira says. “At the very least, there’s no reason anymore that you have to do everything all by yourself. You’re not...the strongest of us, anymore. So it’s okay to...think about yourself. Be a little honest. Tell us what’s up. Or tell Galo, if you would rather do that.”

“No,” Lio says, more quickly than he can stop himself. “Not Galo.”

_Burn_, comes the murmur, as if on cue. _Hotter, hotter._

“Why not?” Meis says with surprise.

Lio wavers. He swallows, again, ineffectually. Whatever is inside of him wants to escape so, so badly. And no matter what control he managed to exert, a Burnish, in the end, existed for one single purpose: release.

Still, his voice, when it finally muscles up his tight throat, is small.

“Do you still…even now, without the Promare…”

They wait, until the last words wisp out.

“…do you still want to burn up everything?”

Whatever they were expecting, it wasn’t that.

“No,” Meis says, with surprise. “I don’t. Not at all.”

“Kind of,” Gueira admits.

“What! Really?”

“Well, not in the same way! But I miss it a lot.”

“He didn’t ask if you miss it. Of course everyone misses it. It was special, even if it was…needy.” Meis holds up a hand, examining his flexing fingers, and the empty air between. “We spent so much of our life trying to obey that…the Promare. But it’s nice that we can just be ourselves, now. Living to the sound of our own voices.”

_No_, Lio thinks, and then, with even more disbelief: _NO._

He turns. They are too startled too stop him; and this time, their calls don’t bring him back.

:::

_Our own voices._

In this mind he had assumed, or maybe only hoped, that the voices he had now were just some Promare echo, still ringing through him. But the fact — that it might be _his own voice —_

Back in his apartment, Lio leans against his closed door.

Reconstruction or not, Galo is a firefighter through and through. And if he learned —

The end of chatting amiably in the mornings while Lio makes tea and Galo reheats leftover pizza in on the machines as the engines warm up for the day ahead. The end of Galo stupidly cheering on his every step in a suit that Lio manages without planting himself cockpit-first in newly poured concrete. The end of times, too, when everyone has gone home, and they just sit together on one of the cranes, watching the sun set, with the same vivid colors it had the first day they’d worked together.

The chill is back. Now, it feels comforting. Lio fumbles in the coat, the inner pocket, curls his fingers around the matchbox. It seemed like such a harmless indulgence, at first. He holds it under the running water of his sink, and crushes it.

:::

But.

_Now that I know what it is, I can overcome it._ It’s not much different from when he was Burnish, after all. He just needs even greater discipline than he had back then, and a clearer image than swords and bows and arrows and full suits of burning armor. He can control this.

_I can control this._

He arrives early, to prepare — gets dressed in a locker room still barely lit by dawn, kicks off the startup sequences, overlooks the day’s plans while zipping up his coat and cranking up the break room heating. There is always plenty to do and everyone seems pleased to have the work already started for them, and Lio succeeds, over and over, as he did back then — with focus, with purpose. A new district is a much smaller thing than a Burnish city, it is easy, it is easy to construct himself to suit this, one steady breath at time.

It is good, valuable work — the kind of thing that needs a head start anyway – updating and double-checking training experience and making sure those assigned to the next phase of the District C buildings knows how to handle sparks from welding material so as to prevent fires — things like that. Everyone is thankful; he can do it. Finally the end of the day arrives, with all its normal hues, and Lio has prepared it, he’s recited it over and over in his head, his usual line before Galo claps his shoulder and moves on: “Good work today, Galo.”

Galo stops. “Are you alright?” he asks immediately, peering over at him.

“I’m fine,” Lio says, frowning.

_I can control this._

He returns home to fitful rest, and repeats. He confines. He can control it. It’s just as he did before — training privately, until he is ready. There’s no rush, there is all the time in this healing world, he is prepared to attend to this as long as he needs and he even senses, for real, that he is getting better, that his own voice has calmed, and that’s why, when the sirens go off, he doesn’t even jump. He looks up, with nothing more than a surprised blink.

There’s a fire. A serious thing, but not too worrying. Galo is on shift; he should fire off the dispatch at the site any moment now. Lio waits, and watches the squealing light rotate, once, twice. Three times more.

In the distance, a crash — big and loud enough to jar him from where he has been working so hard to remain steady, steady, steady. The thought occurs to him, then, as unwanted as any he’s ever had to suffer.

_Surely…it isn’t…Galo — ?_

Another crash; and this time, a scream.

Lio leaps. He races out across the room, and as he passes it, his hand slams down on the emergency button.

_Burning Rescue, dispatch!_

:::

His mind so easily catches flame; it races. Fires are not the same kind of problem they used to be, without the Burnish; but training has been allocated to Reconstruction, mostly, and at this hour Burning Rescue’s patrol would be meandering along the other side of the sector, Lio can get there much faster, and he does. The smoke, pillaring skyward from one of the District C constructions, is surrounded at its base by blooms of fire, and multiple work teams shouting and digging at collapsing structure in a panic, only to have more of it crumple down, to bellow even more smoke and flames.

“Stop!” Lio shouts, and something about him must still resonate as Boss — heads turn toward him — people stop. And then, just as quickly, they start up again.

“Boss —” It’s Mills, shouting over the noise, inside a Mad Destruction Fighter. The Fighter is rattling, shaking — not because it’s damaged, but because Mills’s hands are shaking on the console. He starts to turn and then stops as the suit rotates so far that it almost tips over and crushes Lio completely as Lio runs up.

“Boss,” Mills cries, “I tried to do it like you assigned me, but I couldn’t —”

Lio assigned him? He gapes. There’s no way. Unless — maybe, in his exhaustion — and Mills, so eager to please —

But now Mills is crying again, “Galo,” and Lio understands, knows it with the stomach-sinking certainty of someone realizing too late that they’ve missed a step, and are falling. He knows other things too, in an instant, from how Mills’s eyes are watering and red, and clearly not from the smoke.

“It’s okay,” Lio tells him, and then he tells him, “Get out,” but Mills has already popped the cockpit, is already scrambling, falling, sprawling onto the ground, and then Lio is inside, and falling into a cockpit that is as familiar to him as if he breathed it into existence himself. Then he sets his eyes over the building, its hot skeleton, its molten disintegration. Even if Promare fire was different, it liked to move a similar way; and even if it wasn’t as obedient as Burnish flame, Lio knows how to find its opening.

There. A place where the structure is sagging. Lio pulls a lever, arches up the suit’s right arm to catch the matoi as it launches out, and expands. He uses it to slice through a beam, which drops, and frames a triangle-shaped entryway.

He goes. There is someone shouting behind him — maybe — they are closed out by the cockpit clinching its ventilation in response to the smoke, and flashing warnings on the windshield, which Lio bats away one after another in favor of Lucia’s thermoscope, which yields in the red mass of flames an inconsistent, slightly cooler figure, pinched down by debris.

Galo. Trapped. He is close — and the fire is strong — but it’s nothing Lio hasn’t faced before, nothing he is afraid of even when one third of the status screens goes dark and takes with it the cockpit air conditioner. The cabin begins to heat. Lio swings the matoi to blow away the smoke, and as he steps forward he shakes his head to dislodge a bead of sweat that sizzles on some panel, somewhere.

More, he thinks, with every successful step, more, more, and there is something rising in him, something that blisters and seethes in his ribcage, and propels him forward, even as things get — _Hotter —_

There. Galo is pinned, belly to the ground; the glass of his cockpit is shattered on one side, and Lio can see his arm, flailing, and the gouges in the ground from where he’s tried to scrape himself out. Lio considers the beam fallen across his suit, and then, with gritted teeth and a gasp of pain, levers the matoi beneath the beam and heaves it off. The effort takes one of the Fighter’s melting arms, which crashes safely to the side as Galo quickly rolls around. Their eyes meet.

“Lio!” Galo isn’t completely audible from inside the other cockpit, but the words are easy enough to read, and assume. “What are you doing? Get out of here!”

Probably the same thing he told Mills, before things spiraled out of control.

“No,” Lio replies.

Falling debris is a real danger; Lio poses the suit protectively, and locks the joints in place. This way, though, he can’t use it to crack Galo’s cockpit fully open. Galo is slamming all the buttons and knobs and hatches he can reach, to no effect. He’s trapped inside, and the suit is melting, the flames are eating at the engine and hissing threateningly and Galo’s last resort, his pounding and kicking on the glass is — is weakening. Lio feels something seize. Losing Galo is not an option.

All his screens are red, now. _THIS SUIT IS BEYOND REPAIR_, Lucia’s pre-recorded voice yells, _GALO, YOU IDIOT._ Lio sucks in a breath, then jams the button to open the cockpit, and — when it cites warnings and refuses to budge — Lio hooks his fingers into the manual latch, and shoves it up. He’s greeted immediately with ash, and smoke, and immense, immense heat; he staggers and chokes, taken aback. Fire is roaring on all sides. Lio covers his nose and mouth with one sleeve.

Then, with the cockpit gaping, he reaches for one last knob — not his, but one that Lucia added. The coolant packed around the suit punctures, and gushes out in a dense green wave, drenching him, and Galo’s suit, and all flames in a 5-meter radius.

Steam billows over them — blessedly, comparatively, cool. A new strength fills him, and Lio kicks with full force at the cracks in the Galo’s windshield, and this time, it shatters completely. Inside, Galo is pristine, completely uncovered with the soot and goop Lio himself is coated in from head to toe; and, he is coughing, hideously.

_Galo_, Lio hears, _get him, get him,_ and he does, he yanks him with new strength halfway into the coolant-flooded mass of his cockpit, where the air is just a little clearer. Galo thrashes and gulps and spasms, and Lio holds him, tightly, until he stills, weak, and breathing raggedly, but alive. Steady, he looks up at Lio, eyes shining.

“You saved me,” he gasps, and his face is filled with awe, and Lio, despite all the cooling gel, feels suddenly like he could burst into flame at any moment.

“It’s not a big deal,” he mutters, and now Galo’s face flares, with something else.

“Not a big deal? It’s a huge deal! And —” He takes a breath. “What the hell! Look at our position now! How are we supposed to get out of this? You went off and did something again completely on your own —”

“I didn’t,” Lio says, “idiot.”

And that’s when the fire, all at once, is cut through with sirens and wheeling red and blue lights — and a wind whips the smoke away, in one swift gale — and both of them are buried, completely, in gallons and gallons of cold, extinguishing foam.

:::

All progress on the District is gone, now. But. Humanity has thirty years of experience rebuilding, and all the fire-impervious equipment and construction material rebuilding specifically required; it won’t tale that long, really, for buildings to start sprouting up again through the soot. Sitting with Galo on top of the Reconstructionmobile, Lio overlooks the charred remains with disappointment.

“I don’t know how I assigned Mills there,” he says, which is sort of his apology, but after a moment he recognizes it isn’t a very good one, so he sighs, heavily, and says it, just to be clear: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing to be sorry about! It was a mistake. No one was hurt, thanks to you! And anyway, I couldn’t believe how cool you looked, you were like a pro, you even used the matoi! Lio, you’re…” Galo pauses, just slightly, an instant to make weight of the words that come next. “You’re — my hero.”

“I’m not,” Lio says immediately, to which Galo looks at him, brows furrowed.

“Whaat?”

“I’m not your hero,” Lio says, and then, because his heart is already racing, because he’s exhausted from today and from the past countless days, because he is tired of holding, he releases. The words leave him, with all their acrid meaning. “I still want to burn things. All the time. So I’m not — I’m not worthy of it. Being your hero.”

Lio glares then, daring Galo to argue. Galo looks down at him. His eyes narrow. His mouth opens.

“Have you been getting taller?” he wonders, hovering a palm over Lio’s head and comparing it to his own body. “I could have sworn you only came up to here a couple weeks ago.”

“Wh —” Lio swats his hand away. “Idiot! Didn’t you hear me!”

“I did. Actually, I’m relieved,” Galo says. “Because that’s what you’ve been hiding from me all this time, isn’t it?”

This time, Lio is quiet. Galo stretches, makes a huge groan.

“Ahhhh! It must have been so hard to be a Burnish!” He leans back on his hands. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, what you must be going through as the ex-Boss, since you never talk about it yourself. I even asked those old right hand Mad Burnish of yours about it. They were the ones that told me how it used to be, how every emotion might lead to something catastrophic. And how amazing you were because you could control it. But, you probably had to watch yourself all the time, right? You couldn’t let yourself feel things. You didn’t have the non-Burnish luxury of being a loud idiot like me.”

Lio is wordless. Finally, he says, “Even amongst the non-Burnish, only you have that luxury.”

“Lio Fotia!” Galo’s voice raises; he thrusts his finger against Lio’s sternum. “Even though we’ve been training your body, I’ve been remiss in neglecting your shining, fire-hot, ex-Burnish spirit! Once you incinerate that protective, vestigial cocoon — only then will you be able to truly free the true power of your burning soul, which is crying out to be free!”

With every adjective, he pokes Lio’s chest again, a little harder each time. A frisson of heat radiates from each little impact, fizzing down to Lio’s fingertips. Galo’s expression is triumphant, encouraging, excited. Lio is always assuming Galo’s oafishness means that he is ignorant and unobservant and not like he actually is, perceptive, combing through Lio’s silences and dodged glances and taking care to investigate every probability before coming here, confident, and booming, and kind.

Lio rubs his chest, where Galo prodded. No one has ever...helped him, before. Like this. Reached for him, as the human he was always trying to convince the world he was.

_Yes,_ Lio hears. _More. More. More. More._

“Alright,” Lio says, rubbing his chest gingerly. “So how do I do it? How do I...incinerate the cocoon.”

“It’s simple!” Galo announces. “It’s the same as it was for all the Burnish before! Just — release!”

“…Release?”

“Release!” Galo repeats, this time standing, and raising his arms, and shouting over the decimated construction, and almost falling off the Reconstructionmobile before Lio catches his pocket and yanks him back to balance.

“Come on!” Galo says, and pulls Lio to his feet. “Just shout it! Whatever you’re feeling! To everyone!”

The smoldering ruins. The empty worksites. The distant innocents laughing and milling over their dinners in the warm night air and burning sunset. Galo beside him, arms akimbo and stance straight, big and warm and expectant.

Lio takes a breath, and then feels the muscles in his throat clench. He exhales, jaggedly, with a grimace. How could he possibly just...?

Could he really just...?

It rises, again — the feeling. He holds it, tightly, carefully. It’s a feeling like...being so cold that he wants to jump out of his skin, and then so hot that he wants to burst. Like his stomach so full of embers all he can think of is wanting to spit them out and feel his anxiety dissolve in light and luminous smoke. _More, hotter, hotter._

It swells, in his chest. Familiar, from the time that he woke up from the ashes of his own body and saw Galo gazing down at him — and different, really, in the end. Stronger, as he suspected, as he knew. _My own voice_ — which deserves its freedom the most, after so long. He closes his eyes, and takes another breath, this time bigger, this time deeper. He holds his breath, for just a moment, an instant to make weight of the words that come next. He shuts his eyes.

“You’re my hero too!” Lio yells. “Galo Thymos!”

Heat rushes up his chest, to his face, seething, burning. He shudders. It is worse than all his early days, when he was afraid to open his eyes again and see what he might have scorched with his dumb, uncontrollable liberties. But what he feels now is not — hot, really — or even cold — just — an extreme warmth, permeating down behind his ribs. And when he finally lets an eye open, the only thing he sees is Galo, smiling. Beaming at him, as bright as flame.

Lio yells again, this time without any words, as Galo hugs him and lifts him up.

“Wh –”

“I have a new name!” Galo announces. “The Hero of the Mad Burnish’s Ex-Boss! Or maybe — the Hero of the Mad Burnish’s Ex-Boss, Who Can Wield a Matoi as Well as The Amazing Far East Firefighters of Ancient Times! Wait, no —”

“Put me down! Galo! Stop! Galo! We’ll fall!”

But Lio can’t help it; he’s laughing, loudly, and when they do fall, it turns out that it doesn’t really hurt at all, that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on subsequent watches of promare it occurred to me how much galo really puts into the idea of “hero”...realizing kray betrayed him was like his most emotional part of the movie?! i really liked that extra little thread of ~ hero-ness ~ in his character pulling off from the more common idea of “firefighters are heroes”.
> 
> anyway! thank you for reading! 🔺❤️🔺

**Author's Note:**

> part of me is a little sad the promare go away at the end, but i have so many thoughts about what it might be like for lio to "recover" from being a burnish, what things might be harder than others, and learn how to live a new life..../// i like to imagine that lio's relative indifference/stoicism at the beginning of the movie is connected to needing to maintain control of his super strong power. one of my favorite things about the movie is how he opens up so much by the movie's end, but i bet it would still be a little tough....hmm.
> 
> ok thoughts over! thank you for reading! ▵♥


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